Psychology of Reproduction: Pregnancy, Parenthood, and Parental Ties

Abstract

Over the last generation, profound changes have occurred in the relationship between sexuality and reproduction, the assumption that pregnancy leads to parenthood, and the equation of parenthood with loving parental ties. With the increased availability of safe, effective contraception, sexual relations are less likely to lead to unwanted pregnancies. When such pregnancies do occur, the accessibility of legal abortion enables parenthood to be more of a choice than an inevitability. If a much-wanted pregnancy ends in perinatal loss, there is the recognition that a real baby has died, allowing the couple to identify themselves as bereaved parents. The dramatic advances over the past 30 years in assisted reproductive technologies (ART), especially in vitro fertilization (IVF) and intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) have also served to detach sexuality from reproduction and to devise multiple gestational pathways to parenthood. The explosion in infant abuse and neglect cases during this time period undercuts the belief that becoming a parent ensures nurturant parenting. Finally, the reduced stigmatization and greater incidence of women giving birth out of wedlock, as well as the great increase in the percentage of women joining the workforce soon after birth, has dramatically altered women's options for parenting and work. In short, although the usual sequence of reproduction (i.e. sexual relations→pregnancy→parenthood→nurturant parental ties) that is embedded in the traditional biologic nuclear family may still be a path many follow, it may no longer predominate, even as some question how universal that traditional family ever was.